Peachtree Plantation – McClellanville – Charleston County
Basic Information
- Location – South Santee River, McClellanville, St. James Santee Parish, Charleston County
- Origin of name – ?
- Other names – Peach Tree
- Current status – Privately owned
Timeline
- ? – Earliest known date of existence
Thomas Lynch, Sr. owned the property.
- 1762 – House built
- 1772 – Thomas Lynch, Jr. (signer of the Declaration of Independence) married Elizabeth Shubrick and they made their home at Peachtree. His father, Thomas Lynch, Sr., gave him the plantation sometime before he got married (Bridges & Williams, p. 69).
- 1779 – Thomas Lynch, Jr. and his wife died at sea en route to France via the West Indies. They left no children to inherit the property (Bridges & Williams, p. 69).
It was Thomas Lynch, Sr.'s wish that the Lynch name be carried on. In his will he stipulated that if his son died without any male heirs, then whoever took over the plantation would take the name of Lynch. Thomas Lynch, Jr. followed his father's wishes. He made arrangements with his sister, Sabina, that if he died without any male heirs then her first son would get Peachtree if he changed his name to Lynch. Sabina agreed, and she and her husband, John Bowman, owned and managed the place until their son came of age (Bridges & Williams, p. 70).
- 1787 – John Bowman had Jonathan Lucas build the first water mill in the world for pounding rice at Peachtree (Bridges & Williams, p. 106).
- ? – Sabina and John Bowman's son, John, came of age and agreed to change his name to Lynch. Peachtree now belonged to John Bowman Lynch.
- ? – John Bowman Lynch had two children and both predeceased him. He moved to Tennessee and the Lynch name was no longer carried on (Bridges & Williams, p. 70).
- 1835 – John Bowman Lynch leased Peachtree to Stephen Duval Doar. Doar did not want to live in the house so he built his own on the Peafield tract (it was customary for planters to name their fields so they could direct slaves where to work) (Linder & Thacker, p. 722).
- 1840s – The Peachtree house burned.
Land
- Number of acres – ?
- Primary crop – Rice
Owners
- Alphabetical list – John and Sabina Lynch Bowman, John Bowman Lynch, Thomas Lynch, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Sr.
Slaves
- Number of slaves –
Buildings
Web Resources
Print Resources
- Initial references: 2, 40
- Anne Baker Leland Bridges and Roy Williams III, St James Santee Plantation Parish History and Records, 1685-1925, (Spartanburg, SC: The Reprint Company, Publishers, 1997).
- Suzanne Cameron Linder and Marta Leslie Thacker (with preliminary research by Agnes Leland Baldwin), Historical Atlas of the Rice Plantations of Georgetown County and the Santee River (Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 2001), pp. 718-723.
